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Features » March 8, 2006

General Condemnation

Retired Lieutenant General William Odom was the director of the National Security Agency between 1985 and 1988. Currently a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and a professor at Yale University, Odom has been an outspoken critic of the Bush administration’s foreign policy.

You’ve described Iraq as the greatest strategic mistake that the United States has ever made. Could you elaborate on that?

A shorthand way is to reflect on what happened to the Hapsburg Empire. There is an analogy here with bin Laden and 9/11 and his taking refuge in Afghanistan. I think invading Afghanistan made some sense because we were going after the culprit. But when we went into Iraq, we were invading a country that didn’t have anything to do with 9/11. This has set in motion some of the same kind of consequences that the Hapsburgs set in motion by their ultimatum to Serbia, which started World War I and led to their own destruction.

Rather than losing the United States as an empire, what we’re doing is losing Europe. In other words, we’re essentially destroying NATO. And NATO has provided a supra-national-political-military substitute for government in Europe, which has allowed the longest period of peace and prosperity in the history of Europe. Whether that can continue without NATO or without a strong U.S.-European connection through formal institutions is most doubtful.

So we would essentially be destroying this international system.

Absolutely, but what we are destroying is not a territorial empire, it is an ideological empire. The ideology’s not democracy; it’s liberalism with a capital L. Liberal countries are countries that have constitutions. They brought the state under control. They limit the power of the state, they make it the honest referee. Those countries have always become democratic in their decision-making procedures, but countries that become democratic without first having a solid constitutional agreement almost never turn out to be liberal.

And unlike previous empires, countries have generally fought to get in this one, not to get out.

Remember that in the fall of 2001, the U.S. had over 90 countries participating in five sub-coalitions in the anti-terrorism coalition. We never have had so much international support in our history. And we had NATO, without any urging, invoking Article 5 of the treaty saying that bin Laden’s attack on the United States was an attack on them.

U.S. international support began to erode only when the president announced the “Axis of Evil” in January 2002. And I remember being confused as to what the Europeans were talking about until I heard a couple of senior diplomats–deputy chiefs of mission of major NATO countries–saying, “We signed up to fight al-Qaeda, and when we heard the president’s speech, he was asking us to declare war on Iraq, Iran, North Korea.”

They didn’t sign up for that, and they weren’t even asked. And then the president marches on, acting as if Europeans were fools because they didn’t sign up for the war, as if they were out of place to question whether they should even be consulted.

A lot of people have talked about the reasons why we made the mistake of going into Vietnam. It’s harder to get a handle on why we made the mistake in Iraq. How do we find out what the reasons were?

Only thing we could do is ask Mr. Bush. It seems to me that it’s pretty hard to imagine us going into Iraq without the strong lobbying efforts from AIPAC [American Israeli Public Affairs Committee] and the neocons, who think they know what’s good for Israel more than Israel knows. The invisible elephant in the room on this issue is the Israeli factor. People don’t like to talk about it. Now that we’re in there, we’re getting to realize that the war is creating far more dangers for Israeli security than it’s provided improvements for Israeli security.

I think you’re going to see a Shiite Islamic regime in at least a large part of Iraq and it’s going to cooperate with Iran, and Iran with Hezbollah in Lebanon, and that will create all kinds of trouble for Israel.

It’s a lot of hubris, a lot of intellectual arrogance, on the part of neocons who think they know what’s better for everybody else.

So put that all aside. The most important thing to remember is to go back and use the Vietnam example. Our failure after 1964, after the Gulf of Tonkin, when we decided to increase the troop levels, was not to ask the question, again and again, what was our strategic purpose in Vietnam and did it make any sense.

I remember that James Graham, who was the CIA’s Asia guy, also argued against the war until Kissinger finally forced him out. So, the agency wasn’t on board for that war either.

To blame the intelligence community is a big mistake. Intelligence communities are not free. They’re hired agents for a particular administration, which picks their leaders. Take this analogy from the corporate world: Have you ever heard of a board of directors firing a vice president for marketing? No, corporate boards fire the CEO because it’s the CEO’s job to hire the vice president for marketing. So if the Congress is so upset with the CIA’s performance on the war, they should impeach the president.

Is there much chance in your view that the Congress is going to weigh in on Iraq or on the possibility of further confrontations with Iran anytime soon?

The Iraq issue will come back because it’s just going to get worse. The administration may find some cover to cut and run. I would not be surprised to see in a few months, when the Shiites are pretty well ensconced in the government, they may just say it’s time for you fellas to leave.

Which would be great.

It would be great in the sense of not staying longer, but then we would be facing the strategic ramifications for Iraq and the region, which we are going to have to face sooner or later anyways. And that is that we have actually put in the driver’s seat a country whom we have defined arbitrarily as one of our worst enemies, Iran.

There is a knee-jerk tendency to say, “Well, if we left, it would be a mess. Therefore, we can’t leave.” That requires blinding oneself to the fact–the reality–that our presence is creating the mess, that we don’t keep a mess from happening by staying, and that we don’t have the alternative of not creating a mess. When we crossed the border of Iraq with the invasion, all these untoward outcomes were inexorably going to happen.

From the beginning I was unambiguously against this war. I said that the U.S. invasion of Iraq is not in our interest, it is in the interest of al-Qaeda and the interest of Iran.

Have people come back to you to say, “General Odom, you were right?”

It’s not anything particularly brilliant on my part. We have all been made to put up with this preposterous illusion. It’s like somebody telling you, “There’s no cloud in the sky today.” And when you look up and can’t see the sun, you say, “You know, I don’t see the sun.” It doesn’t take a lot of insight to point out that there’s no sunshine up there.

It seems like there are a lot of dishonest people making policy so we’re left to figure out how to deal with that. People see these statements coming out of Washington and think, “Well, my gosh, how do I make sense of that?”

The sad thing to me in that regard is that the Democrats gave the public virtually no real choice in the last election. So I’m not terribly surprised at the way it came out, but I don’t think it really reflects where the public stands on the war in Iraq. I’ve given up on the Democrats. I think the best hope right now, for the next election, is to find a Republican who will say that the war is a mistake strategically and then get out.

There was an article in Der Spiegel saying American emissaries had been trying to convince the Germans and Turks and so forth to prepare for some kind of assault on Iran. Do you see any realistic chance that we are now going to start confronting Iran?

I would have, in the past, said it’s almost too ridiculous to take seriously. But given this administration’s record, I’m reluctant to rule it out.

You can look at this and make a very strong case that by naming the “Axis of Evil” and invading Iraq, we have actually strengthened North Korea and strengthened Iran. They’ll both end up with nuclear weapons, whereas they might not have if we hadn’t done this. If you had a good reason to invade Iraq, and I don’t think we did, you shouldn’t have lumped Iraq together with Iran as enemies until after you had achieved what you wanted to achieve in Iraq. Surely you don’t want two enemies out there. Why not have Iraq’s other enemy, Iran, on your side?

George Kenney, a former career U.S. foreign service officer, resigned in 1991 over U.S. policy toward the Yugoslav conflict. He is now a writer in Washington, and host and producer of the podcast Electric Politics.

WW,
Please, Do not put words in my mouth.
They are ugly enough when you use them.
As far as questioning the reality of the Holocaust, good grief. One conspiracy nut theory is begeting another.Posted by Jay Cline on 2006-03-20 11:43:12

TOO many peoplePosted by wileywitch on 2006-03-19 11:59:42

typo correction: NOT TO MANY PEOPLE have been able to pull the rug out from under mePosted by wileywitch on 2006-03-19 11:58:20

logan, nothing to forgive---it's not like being a man is a bad thing. I just wanted to give the information.
I have been reading a bit about Holocaust revisionism, and It is not easy to question the "story". It feels like having the rug pulled out from me, and to many people have managed to accomplish that>.
Since I was in the sixth grade, I've been taught that Israel grew roses in the desert. It sometimes appears that Isreal grows roses out of its butt. Isreal has been taught with such essentialism and exceptionalism that we were never even taught to ask Why can't we be more like Isreal?
As far as AIPAC goes, it really ticks me off that they're spying on us and selling our secrets to China and that they sold our secrets to the Soviet Union during the Cold War. I think government secrets are hooey, but it still makes me mad that our supposed "ally" would betray us in these stupid games.
Between Israel and Chalabi, our wayward cabinet is decimating Iraq. Pipeline to Haifa. Yeah, right.Posted by wileywitch on 2006-03-19 11:57:20

Wileywitch: A thousand pardons, my lady! Please try to find it in your heart to forgive me.
No, I have seen nothing describing THE ISRAEL LOBBY article as you speculate. One only has to read it and the credentials of its authors to recognize it as a carefully researched and objective piece of work.Posted by logan on 2006-03-19 09:09:16

Logan why I find it compelling escapes me, but I want to assert that I am a she. I'd love it if we had a gender neutral pronoun for people, because sex doesn't matter in these posts, but I am not a he---so, I feel like I have to correct that, or I would be lying.
Liked that article by the way. Very level-headed tone, though it has probably been described as "shrieking" and "ranting" and "maniacal", etc.Posted by wileywitch on 2006-03-18 20:35:35

Wileywitch is obviously correct in his ironic comments.
For a detailed discussion of the US-Israel relation and its negative fallout for the U.S., read online, THE ISRAEL LOBBY, by John Mearsheimer (Univ. of Chicago) and Stephen Walt (Kennedy School, Harvard) in the current issue of the London Review of Books (www.lrb.co.uk).
It will be interesting to see if any of the mainline U.S. media have the integrity and courage to publish THE ISRAEL LOBBY.Posted by logan on 2006-03-18 10:32:01

Mitcherino, I think he's saying that anyone who questions anything about "The Holocaust" is to be completely dismissed as a nut case, and that anyone who criticizes Israel is crazy, if not anti-semitic. (As if the Palestinians weren't Semitic).
It is supposed to be obvious that Palestinians are all terrorists and Islamo-fascists, because they fight against Israel's illegal occupation of Palestinian territories. It is supposed to be understood that when Palestinian children throw rocks at soldiers, that the soldiers are obliged to shoot the children in the head so that they don't grow up to be suicide bombers.
Those that rail against the "Holocaust Deniers" declare that doing scholarly research into "The Holocaust" that questions details of "common knowledge" for which there is no, or little, or conflicting evidence deny that the Jews were ever oppressed by Hitler at all, and declare the "deniers" to be anti-semitic, insane, irrational.
It is supposed to be understood, you see, that "The Holocaust" is so unlike any other genocide in the history of mankind, and research into "The Holocaust" is so unlike historical research of any other historical event in the history of mankind that it is simply mad to question anything about it.
And that, is supposed to be the high-handed, sober view of "The Holocaust" and Israel.
You see, the Palestinians are evil for trying to prevent the Israelis from driving them out of the country that was, until 1947, called Palestine.
Though I agree that the Iranian leader is over the top, he did have a point---it was Europeans who oppressed and murdered the Jews. Why didn't Europe give the Jews a country of their own in Europe or welcome them into existing European communities, or let them go back to what was "home" before the war?
Oh, and Isreal having full nuclear capability, though undeclared and unmonitored as they sit on the Security Council? That's because they are so special. The Muslims, Palestinians, and Arabs, or anybody who has a problem with that just doesn't get it and is probably an anti-semitic bigot who denies the holocaust.Posted by wileywitch on 2006-03-17 21:11:17

Jay Cline,
Are you really saying that Israel isn't at the heart of it all?Posted by Mitcherino on 2006-03-17 13:45:29

Oh God, not the ol' Zionist conspiracy nut theory again?!
The next thing we hear is nightmare stories of the gnomes of Zurich and people pandering to Iran's current president because he has the courage to declare the Holocaust wasn't real.....Posted by Jay Cline on 2006-03-17 12:45:19

Hey, Mitcherino, I had a wha??!! moment when Odom began to speak as if we were hurting Israel, rather than doing it's bidding. Whatever the case, if having nuclear weapons and delivery systems (including submarines) that can hit any place in the mid-east or Asia doesn't console them, then what will?
God knows, it must be confusing to be the chosen people, illegal occupiers, the elephant in the living room, and the all-time-greatest-victims in the history of humanity at the same time, but it might relieve some of the pressure and disappointment that Israel has been expressing about U.S. actions lately, if ---as you suggested---news about AIPAC were to be front and center every day of the week in the MSM.
Vanella, three years hardly constitutes the past, especially when the reasons for going to war have yet to be adequately explained. Launching an illegal, preventive strike against a nation that posed no threat to us whatsoever is the kind of thing that should not be relegated to been there, done that glib-ville. The statute of limitations for mass murder, crimes against peace, crimes against humanity, and war crimes do not expire.
The escape strategy is much easier and less costly than the attack strategy. We pack, we load things on to vehicles, we load people on to vehicles---using already prepared checklists for verification and headcounts--- and then we leave.
JohnG, thanks for bringing up the satellite technology that could have read Hussein's novels as he wrote them. We did rely heavily on satellite technology during the "war". The Russians noticed, and are quite confident that our military can be very easily crippled.Posted by wileywitch on 2006-03-13 19:01:28

I mean, yes, AIPAC did want us to go into Iraq. But it was to remove WMD's and Hussein so that Israel would feel safe. So Hussein's gone now, any weaponry is hidden or moved, and woops, now Iran's got a crazy man as its leader. AIPAC must have known the crazies would get in power if we went into Iraq. Why did they insist upon it? Was it just a bad choice? Bad luck? Incompetence in the intelligence/leadership of AIPAC?Posted by Mitcherino on 2006-03-13 14:35:47

AIPAC AIPAC AIPAC AIPAC AIPAC AIPAC AIPAC
Did you read what this man Odom had to say?
"itPosted by Mitcherino on 2006-03-13 14:29:27

okiPosted by Mitcherino on 2006-03-13 14:28:49

It seems were still stuck in the past. We talk about the lies and mistakes that got us into the war, but are seriously lakcing in any escape stragity. Were stuck in the past and need to look forward.
What we need is a plan to take out the Republicians.Posted by Vanella on 2006-03-10 10:53:57

I appreciate Odom's comments. I do not convincing, but given this President's trigger mentality and the office held by his vice President
under the former President Push, I cannot believe that he (they) did not know about the truth on the ground in Iraq. I cannot believe they did not use our space technology (including our capacity to stay stationary in space over a target) to map out every single square inch of that country --as we had done with the Soviet Union. All of that 'stuff' about intelligence was just razmatazz to keep us suckers (including the Congress) at bay while they went about their business.Posted by JohnG on 2006-03-09 20:03:34

Just read Odom's article comparing Iraq and Vietnam (he sees many analogies). It is only a matter of time before he is swiftboated by the laptop bombardiers whose only uniform has been the one they wore in the high school marching band.Posted by opeluboy on 2006-03-09 19:41:13

I admire Mr. Odom and other retired high-level military officials such as Anthony Zinni who have the strength to criticize what is clearly a disastrous and morally bankrupt policy.
I specifically remeber seeing Odom on CNN prior to the invasion of Iraq with Wolf Blitzer. Blitzer was very skeptical of Odom's statements about Iraq and seemed preturbed at what he was hearing. I was quite angry after witnessing this clear journalistic bias. I lost complete respect for Blitzer after that.Posted by Liberal on 2006-03-09 11:11:18

General Odom makes a convincing case case against the Iraq War, touching briefly on the root cause, i.e., the security of Israel. Retiring U.S. Senator Earnest Hollings made the same point several years ago but it got only a few days' play in the national press. It is the elephant in the living room that the mainstream media ignores whenever possible. Only those with credentials like Gen. Odom and Sen. Hollings can penetrate this shield, and I hope Gen. Odom will continue this efforts do so. The international integrity of the United States is at stake.Posted by logan on 2006-03-08 12:07:38